Friday night, for what it’s worth.

My decision to keep working from home wasn’t so irrational after all: I found out that one of my coworkers got covid after working on site at his warehouse. He had the WFH option the whole time, but… It’s hard to say why exactly he chose to keep coming in to work. It might have been youthful zeal, or the desire to impress his bosses, or peer pressure from his business partners – we’ll never know. I do know that he’s out sick, and he has a wife and a baby. I hope everything turns out well. There are only 10 of us in Canada that do what I do, and with one of us getting covid, that makes our line of work (10% positivity rate and all) a pretty risky one, I suppose.

The silver lining of the mushroom cloud is that now we’ll be able to effectively argue that no, we’d really rather continue working from home, please and thank you.

This has been a fairly eventful week: the Pfizer vaccine news; the stock market spike, followed by a decline, followed by a small resurgence; the long-awaited biometrics appointment, etc. American Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away, followed by a very busy month at work, which should fly by even faster than usual. And all the while, as my personal goals get fulfilled and my portfolio grows and my exercise routine gets more elaborate, the world will continue to burn. Can’t throw a rock without hitting a discrepancy these days.

In covid news, Trump held a briefing on covid vaccines earlier today. The recorded video looks like something from an alternate universe. Neither he nor any of his flunkies bothered to mention that over a thousand Americans die each day, or that the number of new cases in the US is rapidly growing, higher than ever before. Instead, Trump made a point of promising that there would be no nationwide lockdowns. Instead, he cited a lot of misleading statistics showing how great his response has been. (No one cares how many ventilators you got when there are morgue trucks and triage preparations.) Instead, his three follow-up speakers made sure to thank him and lick his boots. I suppose one thing really is true: the current state of the pandemic would not have been possible without him. “The moment of truth in your lies,” as the song goes…

Also, Alaska’s sole congressman, Don Young, has tested positive for covid. Back in March, he referred to covid as “the beer virus” and mocked those who took covid seriously: “we have to as a nation, as a state, to go forth with the everyday activities.” I guess he practiced what he preached, eh? Young is 87 years old, which puts him in one of the highest-risk groups out there. As always, I hope he makes it. If he doesn’t, he’ll be the first congress-critter to die of covid – though not the first to catch it.

Stay safe out there, eh?